Design: Take Shelter in a Human Habitrail

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Design: Take Shelter in a Human Habitrail

Kennedy-era fallout shelters were little more than cement boxes filled with cans of spinach. Modern end-time housing structures, like those from Radius Engineering, are smart and stylish. Take the Trogonia 8, a modular, self-sufficient, radiation-proof colony—complete with fitness center, restaurants, and city hall—that will keep as many as 2,000 people safe and snug for up to five years. With that kind of thing, you can Noah's ark the whole subdivision.

Radius' shelters start at $200,000; the multifamily pod shown below goes for $2 million, plus about 25 percent for shipping and installation. They all have fiberglass shells, which are less prone to cracking than concrete and, lacking steel, won't show up on target-acquisition systems. The bunkers can run for years entirely off the grid, which means that when a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse takes out power on the surface, you'll still be able to operate your hair dryer. And they're buried far enough underground to be impervious to radiation. In the event of a chemical or biological attack, you'll feel secure knowing that the sealed and pressurized units come with specially designed air filtration that uses three different physical purifiers and an ultraviolet-radiation sterilization system.

Radius has installed more than 1,000 shelters worldwide over the past 30 years; most are intended to protect key people in the government, military, insurance industry, and medical services. So if you don't have enough gold bars to plant your own postapocalyptic condo, don a stethoscope and worm your way into someone else's contingency plan. Call it survival of the sneakiest.